Two million gallons of sewage hit TJ River — again

A second sewage release of 2 million gallons in less than a month has fouled the Tijuana River, one of the most polluted waterways in the country.

San Diego County officials said Wednesday that the leak lasted for about 12 hours until midnight Tuesday and was caused by a broken sewer line near Mexico’s Rio Alamar, which drains to the Tijuana River and eventually the Pacific Ocean.

It’s unlikely that either accident will result in major penalties because the most recent incident happened in Mexico, where California officials have no authority, and the earlier spill was at a plant owned by the United States government, which generally is immune to fines under the Clean Water Act. For a municipal agency in San Diego County, a 2 million-gallon leak could generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

None of the sewage spilled Tuesday was recovered before it poured into San Diego County, according to the county Department of Environmental Health. It said beaches that typically would be closed by such a spill already were off-limits to water contact because of sewage-tainted flows that have been entering the United States since mid-March.

It’s not clear when beach closures will be lifted; health officials said they will remain in place until water testing shows the water is safe for swimmers and surfers.

Despite hundreds of millions of dollars of spent on both sides of the border, contaminated runoff from neighborhoods in Tijuana regularly streams downhill into San Diego County following rains — and that problem is exacerbated by equipment failures and other upsets.

The huge back-to-back incidents boosted concern in the South Bay.

“Accidents happen, but there are concrete measure and specific infrastructure upgrades that can be made to reduce the risk of sewage spills and polluted beaches,” said Paloma Aguirre of Wildcoast, an environmental group that works on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. “We (can’t) afford to continue to jeopardize the health of ocean users, our tourism economy and the brand new Tijuana Rivermouth Marine Protected Area because of the accidental release of sewage.”

On April 4, an estimated 2 million gallons of sewage spilled into the Tijuana River Valley due to what officials called operator error and a computer glitch. That incident was at a plant in San Ysidro owned by the U.S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission, where the sewage overflow damaged pumps.

A spokeswoman for the boundary commission said Wednesday that the agency expected to get its pumps back online Thursday.

The commission also said it had improved its notification process so that groups such as Wildcoast are alerted to spills quickly. After the early April incident, residents and organizations complained about not getting notice for several days. Aguirre lauded the boundary commission’s improved communication effort this time around and said she met with regulators on Wednesday to press for investments such as refurbished wastewater pipes to avert future problems.